A GA approach to the optimal placement of sensors in wireless sensor networks with obstacles and preferences

The wireless sensor network (WSN) has recently become an intensive research focus due to its potential applications in many areas. In this paper, we propose a new and efficient genetic algorithm (GA) to the optimal placement of sensors in a grid area with obstacles and preferences to minimize the number of sensors. A new sensor detection model is also introduced in this paper. Experiments show that our algorithm is able to achieve better results than previous heuristic algorithms.